Day Three

Ok, so maybe not all of our tourist-y trips were done. This morning
John and I went for a walk to figure out something to do today and ran
into the American Museum of Natural History. I am a fan of history
museums, but I can't say that I would ever think "hey, let's hit the
museum today". The musuem is 5 stories (ground space being such a
premium) and had amazing displays for dinosaurs, sea life (hence the
Blue Whale), and incredible space/creation of the universe
information. We met a great employee named Michael who talked to is
about the history of Man and science. In the great timeline, Man has
existed for the width of a hair in comparison to the three stories of
spiralling walkway display. Science as we know it today has existed
for 1/100th of the width, and the Hubble telescope has been
operational and changing what we thought we know for 1/2000th of the
width of the hair. Amazing stuff. The rest of the day was spent
wandering, really. We went out to East Village, which is where "it"
is supposedly happening. I guess John and I just aren't, because we
were back home by midnight to watch a movie we bought at the
Blockbuster we passed. I know, crazy us. Tomorrow is cleanup day and
then the subway ride to JFK and back to our lovely women and the
Monsters I miss so much. Speaking of subways, I am proud to bring
your attention to the fact that there are no bad subway choices to
report today. Check me out!

Day 2 - Tourist Day

Today was Tourist Day in New York. I am writing this quite late (or
early) so you will have to forgive the brief nature of my post.

As you can tell, we made it to the statue of Liberty Enlightening the
World, as she is formally known. Pretty interesting history there.
More interesting will be the photoshopped pictures once I get them
home and into the computer. After our visit to the French lady, we
walked by the site of the World Trade Center. Sadly for tourists but
happily for the area and country the site is all closed off for
construction and you can't actually see a darn thing. Instead we went
into the memorial. Very sobering. After some New York pizza to get
our strength up it was off to Rockefellor Plaza, where their tower
observatory rivals the Empire State Building. It was a truly amazing
view of the city. The night out ended with a viewing of the new movie
Righteous Kill, because what trip to New York would be complete
without a good NYPD is corrupt movie? More or less predictable, but
still very well done.

Undercover work

This is John. He looks very different with a mustache.

New York, New York

The Monster Dad is broadcasting from New York this week, as some of you know. My friend and child's namesake has connections in the airline business and had some free time, so with two weeks notice we spontaneously hopped a flight to the beautiful Upper West Side of Central Park. Pictured is our first clear view of the city as seen from the AirTrain which takes you from JFK to the subway system.

Our flight from LAX was fully booked, so unfortunately we had to be bumped up to 1st class. Darn..... I have the subway lines in a program on my phone, which is awesome except that some lines run at different times during the nights and weekends. If you would like an example, we are off W 96th St. We took the A train from 14th to get home, but it doesn't stop at 96th. It stopped at 125th. So we get on a train going back the other direction, and it takes us to 53rd. We finally got back, but you would be amazed at the number of panhandlers that make announcements that they "never" bother people on the train, but...

John hailed his first New York city cab, which was exciting until the driver tried to kill us in traffic. We would gladly get back into his cab, however, after trying a rickshaw this evening. All I can say is holy crap these people have no regard for one another.

Tomorrow will bethe real tourist day. We will start with Old Lady Liberty herself and then work our way back north hitting whatever we find along the way. Wish us luck!